The Twitter Star Chamber Suspends Stacy McCain

by Datechguy | February 20th, 2016

The Twitter Star Chamber Suspends Stacy McCain

Before there was Milo Yiannopou­los there was Robert Stacy McCain. A chain smok­ing, beer drink­ing, cof­fee guz­zling hard nosed reporter who rather than sim­ply going with the flow and repeat­ing the con­ven­tional wis­dom dared to go out into the field and actu­ally see and report for himself.

And when he didn’t have a spot in the MSM to do it any­more on a reg­u­lar basis he began his web site The Other McCain (named to dif­fer­en­ti­ate him­self from his dis­tant cousin John in the Sen­ate) and with fund­ing pro­vided by his read­ers (and some­times with­out it going places on a wing and a prayer) he would travel the coun­try from Alaska to New Hamp­shire from Nevada to New Orleans to cover sto­ries that the MSM would not.

He has man­aged to do all of this while rais­ing a fam­ily of six which now includes two grand­chil­dren who are his joy (although they have con­sid­er­ably slowed down his trav­els, after all fam­ily comes first).

Bot­tom line though not a rich man Robert Stacy McCain is an Amer­i­can Suc­cess story he has built a nation­wide, dare I say world­wide fol­low­ing pre­sent­ing his view­point and high­light­ing the pub­lic view­points of oth­ers who would rather keep their actual words and opin­ions under the radar because Robert Stacy McCain is loyal to his fam­ily, his God, his friends and the Truth.

I know this because I’m proud to say he is my friend. I’ve learned an awful lot from him the most impor­tant thing being there is no sub­sti­tute for actu­ally being there, gath­er­ing fac­tual evi­dence, see­ing for your­self and report­ing the truth.

I guess that’s why Twitter’s new Star Cham­ber has decided to Sus­pend him some­time yes­ter­day evening:

The hash­tag asso­ci­ated with McCain’s sus­pen­sion (#FreeStacy) was actu­ally allowed to trend, at one point, but as Mike Cer­novich points out, now it won’t even auto­com­plete. That’s one of the tools Twit­ter has been using to slow down hash­tags, as of late. Gamer­Gate no longer auto­com­pletes, either, even though sev­eral anti-​GG hash­tags do.

Now in fair­ness Twit­ter is a pri­vate com­pany and they do have the right to run their busi­ness as they see fit.

But I sub­mit and sug­gest to twit­ter & their investors that the way to suc­cess is not to alien­ate half of your poten­tial cus­tomer base par­tic­u­larly in an elec­tion year, fur­ther­more as any­one who knows any­thing about tech can tell you today’s pop­u­lar site can become tomorrow’s AOL& Com­puserve in a heartbeat.

As for myself I’m going to mon­i­tor Stacy’s account on the “quit­ter” plat­form, any­thing he tweets there I’m going to tweet on twit­ter until they get around to sus­pend­ing me, I’ve also tweeted out to some of his friends in the MSM like Jake Tap­per of CNN and Dave Weigel of the Wash­ing­ton post sug­gest­ing that this might be a story worth covering.

I would also remind our friends on the left who might be cel­e­brat­ing that trends tend to ebb and flow and the day may come when you might find your­self silenced by the heavy hand of gov­ern­ment or indus­try. Per­haps you might be count­ing on us on the right to aid you due to our prin­ci­ples despite your silence or cel­e­bra­tion today. I’ll let Amy Pond answer that one:

Either you’re for free speech or you’re not, it’s time to choose sides.

My para­trooper son spends his days jump­ing out of C-​130s and march­ing for miles with 70 pounds of gear on his back, but Rut­gers stu­dents “broke down cry­ing” and were “scared to walk around cam­pus” because Milo gave a speech? Are there any sane stu­dents at Rut­gers? Are there no respon­si­ble adults in the admin­is­tra­tion or fac­ulty? Like every other uni­ver­sity in Amer­ica, Rut­gers has been descend­ing into deca­dent chaos for years,

I often joke that such peo­ple are scream­ing to HR peo­ple “don’t hire me” but per­haps they are just the type of peo­ple twit­ter is look­ing for.

They had bet­ter hope twit­ter still exists by the time they graduate.

Update 2: A great quote from his old blog at the start of the Spark­man case really says what Stacy McCain is all about:

If it turns out that Spark­man was lynched by the Clay County Glenn Beck Palin­ista Wing Nut Mili­tia, OK. If it turns out he was mur­dered by dope grow­ers or ‘shin­ers, OK. If it turns out he was mur­dered for per­verse motives by some tooth­less inbred banjo-​picker who thought Spark­man bore a fetch­ing resem­blance to Ned Beatty, OK.

But if you’re not going to do any report­ing, Andrew, your base­less spec­u­la­tion about the Spark­man mur­der is as far from actual jour­nal­ism as your idi­otic obstet­ric the­o­riz­ing about Trig Palin.

Just the facts and it’s worth not­ing who he gave credit to for his abil­ity to find them

I would never have been able to do that report­ing with­out the gen­eros­ity of the tip-​jar hit­ters. When I got the wild notion of trav­el­ing to Ken­tucky to cover the Spark­man case, I wrote:

Fig­ure 1,200 miles travel round-​trip, at 25 cents per mile, that’s $300. Five meals at $5/​each, that’s another $25. A car­ton of smokes, $50; ten cups of cof­fee, $20. If you add$125/​night for a hotel room, I could make it a two-​day trip for $500.…So if the tip jar con­tri­bu­tions between now and Sun­day evening reach $300, I’ll take it for granted that the rest will come through while I’m on the road. I could be fil­ing reports with a Ken­tucky date­line by Mon­day noon.

That’s why Stacy will for­ever be hated, because the only per­son who owns him is you.

My pol­i­tics are con­ser­v­a­tive, my eco­nom­ics are Aus­trian, my faith is Chris­t­ian. It’s that sim­ple — and cer­tain peo­ple HATE me for it. But those peo­ple hate every­body who is not a Demo­c­rat. Fine. I under­stand that kind of hate, hav­ing once been a Demo­c­rat myself, but Democ­rats think of their per­sonal hatred as “social jus­tice.” And so I under­stand them bet­ter than they under­stand me…They do not fool me, nor should any­one else be deceived by their bogus hus­tle, and the fact that my @rsmccain account got sus­pended? Just fur­ther proof of what I keep say­ing: Fem­i­nism is a total­i­tar­ian move­ment, and the First Rule of Fem­i­nism is, “Shut up!” Sar­keesian and her crowd can­not sus­tain their argu­ments against well-​informed crit­i­cism, and so they attempt to “win” the argu­ment by silenc­ing all criticism.

This is why you can’t even state FACTS about these peo­ple on Twit­ter with­out being accused of “harass­ment.” Facts are harass­ment and truth is hate

Glenn Reynolds says he’s los­ing patience with Twit­ter. Pro­fes­sor, I lost a whole lot more than patience with ’em last year when I was sus­pended based of lies from Brett Kim­ber­lin. Twit­ter is clearly an untrust­wor­thy busi­ness part­ner. The only rea­son I use their ser­vice is the lack of a viable com­peti­tor. As soon as one appears, I will be an early adopter.

This is what we free mar­ket cap­i­tal­ists calls a “busi­ness oppor­tu­nity” Char­lie Baker take note.

Update 6: Author Vox Day links, I’m sure he’s high on the Twit­ter kill list also now a red­dit thread. I think Twitter’s plan is turn­ing out to be less cun­ning than any of Baldrick’s

Unex­pect­edly, and with­out expla­na­tion, my @rsmccain Twit­ter account was sus­pended Fri­day evening. Based on past expe­ri­ences, my guess would be that this resulted from a com­plaint by one of the lead­ing “social jus­tice war­riors” (SJWs) who have been at war with #Gamer­Gate since August 2014. How­ever, there was no rea­son stated for the sus­pen­sion, and who knows? So I’ve switched to the @SexTroubleBook account I cre­ated to pro­mote my book and mean­while, friends who are fed up with Twitter’s bias and cen­sor­ship started the #FreeStacy hashtag.

and of course stacy has an Insta­lanche ensur­ing the story gets even bigger.

Why do I have the feel­ing peo­ple at twit­ter are run­ning to their safe spaces?

Twit­ter isn’t merely tar­get­ing spam­mers. For weeks, users have been report­ing that tweets from pop­ulist con­ser­v­a­tives, mem­bers of the alter­na­tive right, cul­tural lib­er­tar­i­ans, and other anti-​PC dis­si­dents have dis­ap­peared from their timelines.

Twit­ter, as a pri­vate com­pany, has every right to do what they want. How­ever, if they are going to cen­sor or ban on ide­o­log­i­cal grounds, they should be hon­est enough to put that in the TOS and let the mar­ket decide.

McCain is a con­ser­v­a­tive blog­ger who has keyed on the decline of cam­pus cul­ture gen­er­ally and in par­tic­u­lar due process for defen­dants in cam­pus sex­ual assault alle­ga­tions. He is also a vocal critic of Twitter’s de-​verification of @Nero’s account.

Taken together this paints a con­cern­ing pic­ture. The Trust and Safety Coun­cil is a dressed up cen­sor­ship board and will pro­vide cover if and when Twit­ter shut­ting down or dimin­ish­ing dis­fa­vored accounts.

I’d like to say I expected stuff like this, but of course I did not think it could be so soon, or so overt. This was pretty quick.

It’s as if the grown-​ups left for the week­end, and the SJW interns are in con­trol. It was only sup­posed to be just in case the cir­cuit break­ers popped — it is a week­end, after all — but then those interns saw an injus­tice that needed to be fixed, and it couldn’t wait ’til Monday.

Twit­ter may or may not see this as a mis­take. I assume they will adapt to the complaints.

Twit­ter is a pri­vate com­pany, of course, and if it wants to out­law strong lan­guage, it can. In fact, it’s well within its rights to have one set of rules for Robert Stacy McCain, and another set of rules for every­one else. It’s allowed to ban McCain for no rea­son other than its bosses don’t like him. If Twit­ter wants to take a side in the online cul­ture war, it can. It can con­fis­cate Milo Yiannopoulos’s blue check­mark. This is not about the First Amendment.

But if that’s what Twit­ter is doing, it’s cer­tainly not being hon­est about it — and its many, many cus­tomers who value the ethos of free speech would cer­tainly object. In con­struct­ing its Trust and Safety Coun­cil, the social media plat­form explic­itly claimed it was try­ing to strike a bal­ance between allow­ing free speech and pro­hibit­ing harass­ment and abuse. But its selec­tions for this com­mit­tee were entirely one-​sided — there’s not a sin­gle uncom­pro­mis­ing anti-​censorship fig­ure or group on the list. It looks like Twit­ter gave con­trol of its harass­ment pol­icy to a bunch of ide­o­logues, and now their ene­mies are being excluded from the platform.

Update 14: Drudge has linked to Legal Insurrection’s post on the sub­ject this likely means Lim­baugh will be talk­ing the story on Mon­day and yet Twit­ter has not rein­stated Stacy. I’m won­der­ing if they’ve decided to go all in.

Given where the econ­omy is rather than where the MSM pre­tends it is to those who have kicked in (par­tic­u­larly sub­scribers), thanks much.

If how­ever you have not & are both able and inclined I’d really appre­ci­ate it if you’d help us either close Jan­u­ary strong or start Feb­ru­ary stronger by hit­ting DaTipJar.

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Before there was Milo Yiannopoulos there was Robert Stacy McCain. A chain smoking, beer drinking, coffee guzzling hard nosed reporter who rather than simply going with the flow and repeating the conventional wisdom dared to go out into the field and actually see and report for himself.

And when he didn’t have a spot in the MSM to do it anymore on a regular basis he began his web site The Other McCain (named to differentiate himself from his distant cousin John in the Senate) and with funding provided by his readers (and sometimes without it going places on a wing and a prayer) he would travel the country from Alaska to New Hampshire from Nevada to New Orleans to cover stories that the MSM would not.

He has managed to do all of this while raising a family of six which now includes two grandchildren who are his joy (although they have considerably slowed down his travels, after all family comes first).

Bottom line though not a rich man Robert Stacy McCain is an American Success story he has built a nationwide, dare I say worldwide following presenting his viewpoint and highlighting the public viewpoints of others who would rather keep their actual words and opinions under the radar because Robert Stacy McCain is loyal to his family, his God, his friends and the Truth.

I know this because I’m proud to say he is my friend. I’ve learned an awful lot from him the most important thing being there is no substitute for actually being there, gathering factual evidence, seeing for yourself and reporting the truth.

I guess that’s why Twitter’s new Star Chamber has decided to Suspend him sometime yesterday evening:

The hashtag associated with McCain’s suspension (#FreeStacy) was actually allowed to trend, at one point, but as Mike Cernovich points out, now it won’t even autocomplete. That’s one of the tools Twitter has been using to slow down hashtags, as of late. GamerGate no longer autocompletes, either, even though several anti-GG hashtags do.

Now in fairness Twitter is a private company and they do have the right to run their business as they see fit.

But I submit and suggest to twitter & their investors that the way to success is not to alienate half of your potential customer base particularly in an election year, furthermore as anyone who knows anything about tech can tell you today’s popular site can become tomorrow’s AOL & Compuserve in a heartbeat.

As for myself I’m going to monitor Stacy’s account on the “quitter” platform, anything he tweets there I’m going to tweet on twitter until they get around to suspending me, I’ve also tweeted out to some of his friends in the MSM like Jake Tapper of CNN and Dave Weigel of the Washington post suggesting that this might be a story worth covering.

I would also remind our friends on the left who might be celebrating that trends tend to ebb and flow and the day may come when you might find yourself silenced by the heavy hand of government or industry. Perhaps you might be counting on us on the right to aid you due to our principles despite your silence or celebration today. I’ll let Amy Pond answer that one:

Either you’re for free speech or you’re not, it’s time to choose sides.

My paratrooper son spends his days jumping out of C-130s and marching for miles with 70 pounds of gear on his back, but Rutgers students “broke down crying” and were “scared to walk around campus” because Milo gave a speech? Are there any sane students at Rutgers? Are there no responsible adults in the administration or faculty? Like every other university in America, Rutgers has been descending into decadent chaos for years,

I often joke that such people are screaming to HR people “don’t hire me” but perhaps they are just the type of people twitter is looking for.

They had better hope twitter still exists by the time they graduate.

Update 2: A great quote from his old blog at the start of the Sparkman case really says what Stacy McCain is all about:

If it turns out that Sparkman was lynched by the Clay County Glenn Beck Palinista Wing Nut Militia, OK. If it turns out he was murdered by dope growers or ‘shiners, OK. If it turns out he was murdered for perverse motives by some toothless inbred banjo-picker who thought Sparkman bore a fetching resemblance to Ned Beatty, OK.

But if you’re not going to do any reporting, Andrew, your baseless speculation about the Sparkman murder is as far from actual journalism as your idiotic obstetric theorizing about Trig Palin.

Just the facts and it’s worth noting who he gave credit to for his ability to find them

I would never have been able to do that reporting without the generosity of the tip-jar hitters. When I got the wild notion of traveling to Kentucky to cover the Sparkman case, I wrote:

Figure 1,200 miles travel round-trip, at 25 cents per mile, that’s $300. Five meals at $5/each, that’s another $25. A carton of smokes, $50; ten cups of coffee, $20. If you add$125/night for a hotel room, I could make it a two-day trip for $500. . . .So if the tip jar contributions between now and Sunday evening reach $300, I’ll take it for granted that the rest will come through while I’m on the road. I could be filing reports with a Kentucky dateline by Monday noon.

That’s why Stacy will forever be hated, because the only person who owns him is you.

My politics are conservative, my economics are Austrian, my faith is Christian. It’s that simple — and certain people HATE me for it. But those people hate everybody who is not a Democrat. Fine. I understand that kind of hate, having once been a Democrat myself, but Democrats think of their personal hatred as “social justice.” And so I understand them better than they understand me…They do not fool me, nor should anyone else be deceived by their bogus hustle, and the fact that my @rsmccain account got suspended? Just further proof of what I keep saying: Feminism is a totalitarian movement, and the First Rule of Feminism is, “Shut up!” Sarkeesian and her crowd cannot sustain their arguments against well-informed criticism, and so they attempt to “win” the argument by silencing all criticism.

This is why you can’t even state FACTS about these people on Twitter without being accused of “harassment.” Facts are harassment and truth is hate

Glenn Reynolds says he’s losing patience with Twitter. Professor, I lost a whole lot more than patience with ’em last year when I was suspended based of lies from Brett Kimberlin. Twitter is clearly an untrustworthy business partner. The only reason I use their service is the lack of a viable competitor. As soon as one appears, I will be an early adopter.

This is what we free market capitalists calls a “business opportunity” Charlie Baker take note.

Update 6: Author Vox Day links, I’m sure he’s high on the Twitter kill list also now a reddit thread. I think Twitter’s plan is turning out to be less cunning than any of Baldrick’s

Unexpectedly, and without explanation, my @rsmccain Twitter account was suspended Friday evening. Based on past experiences, my guess would be that this resulted from a complaint by one of the leading “social justice warriors” (SJWs) who have been at war with #GamerGate since August 2014. However, there was no reason stated for the suspension, and who knows? So I’ve switched to the @SexTroubleBook account I created to promote my book and meanwhile, friends who are fed up with Twitter’s bias and censorship started the #FreeStacy hashtag.

and of course stacy has an Instalanche ensuring the story gets even bigger.

Why do I have the feeling people at twitter are running to their safe spaces?

Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines.

Twitter, as a private company, has every right to do what they want. However, if they are going to censor or ban on ideological grounds, they should be honest enough to put that in the TOS and let the market decide.

McCain is a conservative blogger who has keyed on the decline of campus culture generally and in particular due process for defendants in campus sexual assault allegations. He is also a vocal critic of Twitter’s de-verification of @Nero’s account.

Taken together this paints a concerning picture. The Trust and Safety Council is a dressed up censorship board and will provide cover if and when Twitter shutting down or diminishing disfavored accounts.

I’d like to say I expected stuff like this, but of course I did not think it could be so soon, or so overt. This was pretty quick.

It’s as if the grown-ups left for the weekend, and the SJW interns are in control. It was only supposed to be just in case the circuit breakers popped — it is a weekend, after all — but then those interns saw an injustice that needed to be fixed, and it couldn’t wait ’til Monday.

Twitter may or may not see this as a mistake. I assume they will adapt to the complaints.

Twitter is a private company, of course, and if it wants to outlaw strong language, it can. In fact, it’s well within its rights to have one set of rules for Robert Stacy McCain, and another set of rules for everyone else. It’s allowed to ban McCain for no reason other than its bosses don’t like him. If Twitter wants to take a side in the online culture war, it can. It can confiscate Milo Yiannopoulos’s blue checkmark. This is not about the First Amendment.

But if that’s what Twitter is doing, it’s certainly not being honest about it—and its many, many customers who value the ethos of free speech would certainly object. In constructing its Trust and Safety Council, the social media platform explicitly claimed it was trying to strike a balance between allowing free speech and prohibiting harassment and abuse. But its selections for this committee were entirely one-sided—there’s not a single uncompromising anti-censorship figure or group on the list. It looks like Twitter gave control of its harassment policy to a bunch of ideologues, and now their enemies are being excluded from the platform.

Update 14: Drudge has linked to Legal Insurrection’s post on the subject this likely means Limbaugh will be talking the story on Monday and yet Twitter has not reinstated Stacy. I’m wondering if they’ve decided to go all in.